There are worse experiences than death. Or at least that's how korr felt it. That was not his name, of course, or at least it wasn't, until an unknown time ago.
He had lost track of time long ago. Of the little he remembered, he only knew that something had happened to him, it was like a pain in his chest, sharp, stabbing, that took his breath away for just an instant, but eternal, that led him into a deep sleep.
Then he woke from that dream, yes, like a dream. Or a nightmare. Korr thought that living in the conditions he found himself in could be seen as one.
But he remembered the day he had woken up. It was intense, even painful. But he didn't let out a single moan, despite feeling disoriented, despite feeling overwhelmed by disconcerting sensations, or suffocation, or weakness, or the whiteness of things. Everything was white.
Then he was taken, he did not know where, by whom or in what place. He, who was once of legal age and robust enough, was held by giant hands until he was deposited in what he had called his prison, where he remained ever since.
It was not until he had contemplated an impossibility that he could realize his situation, or at least, what was happening.
He wanted to curse, but he did not even have the strength, nor the conditions, to be able to summon half of hell into the material plane. Because the reflection that looked back at him was not that of an older man.
Quite the opposite, oh, but it was, yes sir. Because, before his eyes, there were only tiny cheeks, instead of that incipient divorced man's beard. Chubby hands seemed to hang over that gel that held him, and although blurry, he could still distinguish the absurd newborn body that welcomed him to his new reality. To his new nightmare.
For an unknown period of time, in which everything seemed very slow, or very fast, korr remained there, just floating, in the void. He swore that for a moment he thought he would go crazy, and it was not because he was not the only one inside that purgatory, which he indeed endured, as much as he could.
Because he was not the only one in that nightmare place, a cabin so large, that extended upwards, as if it were a skyscraper. The whole place was filled with what he had interpreted as spheres of newborns trapped in gel.
Children, like him, behaving like what they were, children. But this, this made no sense. Why was he there? Why had he become a child again? Who had brought him here? Were these infants like him? Where were his parents? What would be his destiny?
By the way they seemed to be arranged in that room that rose towards infinity, filled with spheres, everything in his mind screamed that somehow they were being taken as human batteries, or worse, although he did not know exactly why.
However, there was no doubt that this situation was extremely inhuman.
And unhappy life, inhuman as it was, continued. And it continued and continued, seeing as a blessing anything that seemed interesting to him, anything, no matter how mundane it seemed, would seem wonderful compared to his imprisonment.
For a while he cried, but none of that mattered. And there he remained, until that thing spoke to him.
Korr did not know when that interaction with the voice began. As monotonous as it was, as creepy as it was, he still felt some relief. Whether he was going crazy, or whether that voice existed, it gave him a warm welcome to his silent purgatory.
Time, in that stillness, wrapped in the encapsulated and translucent abyss, lost all meaning. The absolute atony that gnawed at the edges of his sanity seemed to temper itself with every moment, every breath, every dream he had in that place.
He believed, for a period that could have been a sigh or an era, that silence would be his only executioner.
But the sudden presence settled on him like a precious dew in the middle of the desert.
That sensation felt like an intangible pressure in the interstices of his consciousness. That voice spoke directly to his mind.
At first it was good to hear something beyond his own decaying thoughts, but over time Korr tried to ignore it.
For a while, he also believed that voice was due to the first ravages of perpetual isolation, but the sensation persisted, and the possibility that it was something beyond a delusion took root in his thoughts.
And the first manifestation of that voice seemed to reorganize itself into chromatic sequences that followed each other with an inexorable cadence, forming configurations that his brain, against all odds, began to decipher as symbols.
In fact, the first thing he understood was those three lines, like interspersed bars, which later he was given as the meaning of viltrum.
Then, the symbols became more complex, until they formed images, like visions that clouded his thoughts, infiltrating his dreams.
He saw a lot, he saw more than he ever imagined throughout a whole life.
He also saw worlds. He saw hosts of warriors crossing the atmosphere like meteors, their figures unperturbed in the face of the void, their white uniforms waving in the wake of their own impetus.
All under the same expression, the same clothing, the same feature that identified them, proud and lethal, feared throughout the galaxy. He saw the children of viltrum.
And apparently, he had also been reborn as one, of class 15, although he was unaware of the matter.
And the time of imposition continued with images that planted themselves forcefully in his mind, absorbing by good or by bad everything that was being taught to him.
Learning the nature of a race of conquerors forged in the crucible of war, who knew no mercy, who lacked any kind of vulnerability.
And he remained learning, as much as he was given. He understood the language of these supposed viltrumites, and learned the essentials, according to what the voice tried to explain to him.
He learned so much that time felt like real progress, and time, to a certain extent, made sense, a unique one, given his situation.
Without knowing it, he had grown so much that the entire cabin in which he was under initial maturation, according to the voice's information, already seemed too small for him.
It was then, after a certain period of time, that that man who always watched him every so often had returned once more.
But at that moment, it was no longer just to observe him.
Unlike the many times, the cabin in which he had been subjected to imprisonment had opened, and at that moment, he knew that his life would not be easy, whatever this place was.